


Midmorning

by murderarts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1940s, Angst, Depression, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Mental Health Issues, Misogyny, Short Story, Suicidal Thoughts, Tom Riddle is His Own Warning, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:15:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28853403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murderarts/pseuds/murderarts
Summary: Tom Riddle never knew Briar Valois. All he knew was that she was a filthy Mudblood, that she was scum that had to be scraped off the Earth, eradicated, and she deserved utmost torture. So, with his grip steady around his wand and the curse pushing against his palate, he’s ready to kill her.But he doesn’t.It was quite a strange altercation. Most under his gaze were frightened to their core, fear shaking them into pleads to live, they’ll do anything for it, and he was granted with remarkable ecstasy when he took what they wanted most: life.But Briar didn’t want that. No, she even begged him to kill her, to end her suffering. But why end her suffering if that’s only what the Mudblood deserved?So he leaves her, ravaging other victims until Briar poses him a challenge: kill her by graduation day, or she kills herself. Which would be easy enough if death didn’t sound like a dream to her—so, for his own satisfaction, his only option is to make her enjoy life before bringing it to an excruciating end.
Relationships: Tom Riddle/Original Character(s), Tom Riddle/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	1. twenty days

I hadn’t yet planned my demise. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to do it. The Muggle routes were always the hardest to take—an incision across two arms, straight down the middle, tearing up a vein; a head below water, seven minutes in heaven; a lit match, flames ripping at every organ—

The list goes on.

Witchcraft allowed me to die in peace, to rid myself of the pain even after I’d disappeared. _Avada Kedavra_ really sounded much more like a blessing than the curse it was. No pain at all, just death? I had debated this way of going far too often.

But I deserved pain, so I kept debating.

Yet after having this thought pierce my mind every moment I was conscious, you could only imagine how I felt when Tom Riddle stood there, eyes ravenous, lips dry with the crackle of breeze, ready to kill me. A possibility was that he tortured me first, but the Killing Curse was flat on his tongue and I could already hear it flick off against the grating pressure of wind.

It must’ve been my desperation giving me this impression, for he only paused and lowered his wand ever so slightly.

“Does death not concern you?”

Did I not look concerned?

I cleared my throat. “Should it?”

“It concerns most.”

The air was stale with dead prey the predators had littered across the forest, thick with the leaves and the mud garnering anywhere beneath me. There was the chance of anything finding me here, be it a unicorn or a centaur, but instead it was Hogwarts’ golden boy.

This bullshit school never ceased to amaze.

“Won’t you do it, then?” I asked him, the pencil I was drawing with rolling against the parchment. The circumstance must have confused him—rarely anybody had any courage to even look at this forest, save for sitting there at three in the morning to sketch using a lantern’s dim light. It had become an unbreakable habit, a wasted personal tradition.

Riddle’s wand went completely. “What’s the point?” he fired back, agitated at the lost time. His mouth opened to elaborate, but nothing left it.

So I pushed him.

“Still a kill, isn’t it?”

And by this point he had already spun on his heel, but he paused and turned again. Our mouths took polar opposite directions, mine up into a cheap smile with his twisted into a frown. In the pivot of only so many muscles, our stances on death alone had been poised between us, an impossibly opaque barrier.

His gaze sharpened. “Not one worthy.” And he resumed his expedition back to the castle and he was too far to grasp onto his robes so my voice was the only quick means of attention. 

“No.”

And he stopped again. I think this second interference alone made him homicidal.

“No?”

“Well, why not?” and my words were tripping like a drunk crossing the road, “If you were going to, you may as well.”

I’d never seen so much bewilderment plague someone’s face. He didn’t seem to understand it, and for someone with praised grades, it was certain the void in what my intentions were bothered him more.

Riddle twitched with rage. “Why should I give you what you want?”

“Because you want to kill me, and so do I,” I told him. “Don’t we both win?”

“Is your brain that numb?”

And it was an insult to my intelligence but I bit: “Not numb enough. When I’m dead—because you’ll kill me—it will be.” I didn’t give him time to reply. “I didn’t think you were the one who killed Myrtle Warren two years ago, so count us both surprised.”

I supposed death was his greatest threat, the one that tore heartstrings out before they could be played, because he faltered. To my knowledge, Riddle never faltered.

“Not a word of this, Valois.”

“Or what, Riddle?” Because death did not scare me, “You won’t kill me. You could torture me, but what for?” And because none of it scared me at all, “You know you’re out of options.”

He had stretched beyond his endurance. It was strange to see Riddle’s strict composure slacken like this, my hazy vision clear when I studied his mannerisms—worked jaw, a quick study of every setting—and then the lantern’s flame licked up this façade, an entire sunset pooling on his cheeks. Nothing personal, I studied how everyone carried themselves—but it was hard to register such a true demeanour as a lie.

“My options haven’t found a limit,” he finally said. It was too vague, either secrecy or perfidy.

But before I could argue thrice, he was gone.


	2. eighteen days

I was far from as brave as I thought. In my trek back to my dorm, my head spun like a ballerina, wind lashing against me like punishment for not trying harder, for not convincing him. My knees gave way several times, and not in swoon like the girls that knew (or _thought about_ because nobody _knew_ ) him, but rather in complete and utter terror. No matter how badly you wanted to die, instincts could not be stopped.

Maybe I need to clarify why I asked him. Or, you’re in the same boat, and you would’ve even forced the wand to your chest, breathing hard against it until he said the words.

To save you time, the simple narrative exposition would detail my home life— _kind mother, no father_ —my friends— _Wren, a few other girls I’d forget after graduation_ —and maybe, if the narrator was blunt enough, tell you the insignificance of the aforementioned. There was a void there, a limitless source of triviality. It was all over once you died, and had you been immortal, people would come and go and come and go while you stood and attended every grave with a new bunch of flowers. Soon it becomes a game, and you bring a red bunch and an orange bunch until you finish the rainbow and then go backwards, violet to indigo to blue to green and soon the game wears out and there’s no one left.

And if you had no one, why be immortal at all?

_Snap._

“You listening?”

Wren clicked her digits so close to my eyes it blurred her skin until she pulled back. The structure of my drawing contorted, pencil dragged right off its axis.

I sighed. “Who the fuck names their child ‘listening’?”

She swatted the back of my head with the Prophet. “Shut up, I’m being serious.” Which typically meant she wasn’t being serious at all. “A girl was murdered last night.”

Lucky her. “Who?”

“Melanie North,” Wren’s voice then reduced to a whisper, “She was a Muggle-born.”

I leaned in closer, eyes now skimming the Slytherin table just next to ours. “So they suspect the Heir of Slytherin?”

“That’s right,” she nodded, and I spotted Riddle talking to Lestrange. “Hogwarts will probably be shut down after we leave.”

And from there I knew the kill was a warning. It told me he’d do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, no morality to sway him into the opposite. That nothing about where my true fear lay deterred his ability to hurt.

Though Riddle chose to avert his gaze, Abraxas Malfoy didn’t. In fact, his trance lingered too long before snapping out of it when Avery spoke to him. He knew, and I could only imagine all Riddle’s friends knew. But they weren’t truly _friends_ , and if not friends, where did they stand between the lines of association? Then I remembered that they did not string across any of those lines at all—it was an alliance. A filthy, glory-ridden alliance with one mutual desire: purity. It was funny how they lusted for something so holy whilst attaining it in such a godless way.

I didn’t stop looking for the boy even after the bell rattled with its vigour and students poured into the halls, some darting north to Divination and some south to Potions. Luck swathed me when Malfoy went the same direction. I probably should’ve remembered he was in my class, but I usually paid little attention to who was.

He was quick. I caught up.

“Malfoy.”

He wore the same irritated countenance as his allies. “I forget you were smart enough for Potions, Valois.”

“I’ve passed every Potions exam since our first year.”

“Oh.” Malfoy refused to look at me, only walking faster. “Did you cheat?”

The urge to argue was strong, but my curiosity fought it. “I need to talk to you about Riddle.”

And that must’ve struck a chord since he paused at the door, other students drizzling into the room.

In an attempt to regain composure, he leant against the outer door frame. “What about him?”

I sucked my teeth. “I know about North.”

He scoffed as if he was the one who was nearly murdered the night before. “Right. Tell me your theory later.”

“Abraxas, Briar, are you all right?” said Slughorn, wary of the panic in my throat and Malfoy’s poised nature slipping.

Malfoy smiled, taut. “Everything’s fine, Professor.” Except for the fact I may have been the reason another Muggle-born died, but whatever you say goes.

And because Slughorn liked us, he muttered something indiscernible, and there were no further questions unless they contributed to the lesson.

Thank God for the simplicity of winning teachers over.

But if anyone had mastered that art to an impossible degree, it was Riddle. Not a single teacher censured him, eyes glimmering like fucking gold every time he spoke, no repercussions if he ever handed something in late, not a single detention, a shiny fucking badge dictating him as our superior. As if his god complex couldn’t get worse.

“Briar, your potion’s spilling.”

Wren flushed as she spoke—when this first happened, there was a roar of mirth that smothered the room. Too stupid for the class, just a favourite. Ever since, it had happened countlessly, but the distance from my mind to all five sensations made it hard to believe it was happening at all. It was like watching theatre where the curtain never closed. 

Practically all of it had spilt before I’d gathered it was burning my skin, scorching it to the bone as blood spat and mixed with the potion on the floor. Even then the physical pain was indigestible, and everyone stared, exchanged glances, stared again. Even Riddle’s glare fell flat.

All of a sudden, the mess disappeared, and Wren’s voice slowly fizzled out into background noise— _I’ll take her to the Hospital Wing_ —

“But I’m fine,” I said suddenly, softly. My ruse was to be stoic, but I mistakenly sounded confused. Wren’s first instinct was to take my hands, always has been, but now she couldn’t or else her own hands would sizzle, so she just hopelessly rubbed my shoulders.

“We have to go, all right?”

“No we _don’t_ —”

“Just do us a favour and fuck off,” Avery hissed. “Not all of us are like you.”

The blaze from my hands shot up to my throat. “And what the fuck do you mean by that?”

He looked ready to say something, but his eyes flicked north and back ever so slightly, and his lips were sewn shut. I followed where his stare shifted to see Riddle busy with his work. Everyone else still struggled to keep their eyes astray.

Wren swore in Russian the entire journey to the Hospital Wing, all while I said nothing at all. She swore as the matron fixed my hands up, she swore as she bandaged them and told me they’d fully recover over two days, and she swore when she went to gather our things from Slughorn as the lesson had already ended.

But when we got there, our things were gone.

“Professor,” Wren swung through the door, swearing once more, “Did anyone come to take our things?”

“Oh, hello girls!” He seemed totally perplexed by our arrival. Perhaps nothing _did_ happen. “Why, Tom took them.”

I felt my weight fall.

“Tom Riddle?”

“That’s right,” he said, “The boy was resolute, you see, saying he’d hand you your work and everything, so I let him.”

_Fuck. Him._

I shared a glance with Wren. “Did he say where we could find him?”

Slughorn tried to keep his eyes on his work, but could never turn down a conversation. “I can only assume the Great Hall, my dear girl—or the library, as he often goes there.”

“Right,” I said through tight teeth, “Well, have a good day, Professor.”

“You too, Briar, I do hope your hands are all right—but you know, if there are distractions, the issue can be remedied—”

“It’s quite all right, sir, but thank you ever so much.” For absolutely nothing, you prejudiced dickhead.

I crushed the door shut behind us, hands only stinging slightly. “Right, you go to the Hall, I’ll go to the library,” I gestured with bandaged fingers. Wren went to interject about my hands, but I’d disappeared before she could.

Walking fast was a fruitless decision—the debris of Potions students glanced at my hands and whispered amongst themselves— _did you see her?—yeah, she’s fucking insane—she burnt herself, you know—I won’t be surprised if she kills herself_ —and I couldn’t even properly clench my fists to punch them, so just walked faster until their voices dissolved.

The library was pin-drop silent until I lined it with the squeak of my shoes. Heads raised—one being Riddle’s.

I murmured an apology to the collective and rushed to his side, caging him in with one arm. “Where’s my shit, Riddle?”

He scoffed. “Manners, Valois.”

Was he fucking serious?

“You expect me to be polite when you stole from me?”

Riddle clapped his book shut. “Malfoy told me about you having a theory,” he explained, “so I’ll give you your things back once you tell me what it is.”

My lips parted, jaw hung in shock. Of course Malfoy was a fucking snitch.

He just glared at me. “Well?”

So I dragged a chair back. Pulled my spine against it, hearing it crackle. My fists lay limp on the soiled desk. “It’s not really theoretical. It’s fact.”

“Are you so sure?”

“Very sure,” I told him, voice low. “I know you killed Melanie North.”

His face remained unchanged. “And why do you think that?”

“I just said I _know_ , not _think_ , don’t patronise me—”

“I’ll do what I fucking want.” He spat back.

I scoffed, sanguine. “Like killing Muggle-borns, then?” And pushing, “Well, except for the time one of them wanted you to and you didn’t.” I leaned in closer. “Do you get off on it, Riddle? Do they have to be _begging_ you to stop for you to—?”

His hand came up to my jaw, tight enough that if it were my throat it would be a chokehold, pulling it close to his own. “I will end you.”

“Really?” I smiled. “I owe you one.”

He released my jaw, probably out of disgust. We were so close now—breath fanning skin, knuckles scraping—that if there wasn’t so much hostility blocking us, anyone might’ve miscalculated our relations, somewhere spinning off the _friend_ and _enemy_ line and into an entirely new district. But this thought was discarded when I knew the foul word was just imploring to roll off his tongue—the student behind us was the one who shoved an invisible stopper in his mouth.

“When you find Ivchenko,” he hissed and I stifled laughter at that prospect since he was a Parselmouth, “she’ll have your things.”

So I’d wasted my time? _Nice._

I slung the chair back into place. “See you never, Riddle.”


	3. seventeen days

_Never_ turned out to be only so many hours. About twenty-seven, actually, but nobody was counting. For what was defined as eternal dispute, I didn’t expect _see you never_ to only last three hours over a day.

June was unforgiving—its swelter always was. The breeze was feeble, doing nothing in supplying us with the icy air we needed to dispose of the hot dew on our skin. Most of us had splayed blankets and textbooks across the grass to study, but it was clearly for show as most just left the sporadic bouts of air to flick the pages. Wren had already fallen asleep twice, a textbook flat on her face.

I’d actually scribbled down some decent notes—at least three pages worth—and thanks to my scorched hands, it was only legible to me. I slid them under another book to make sure any sudden wind didn’t take them.

Just then, soft murmurs muffled against the hardback pressed to Wren’s face, forcing her to cast it off and stretch her rigid limbs.

She yawned. “How long was I asleep for?”

I shrugged, eyes back on the page. “An hour? Two?”

“Christ, I think I’ll go back in,” she said. “I’ll never get any work done out here like this.”

I paused. “You’re leaving me?” Though she wasn’t talking to me, her general presence made me feel that less lonely.

“If I want to pass, I’ll have to,” Wren yawned again as she forced herself up, Summoning all her things to her. “I’ll be in the common room.”

We muttered soft goodbyes— _пока_ —and she was gone, talking to another Ravenclaw heading in the same direction. It was Lovegood if the footfalls fell to the throb of iambic pentameter—his habitual limp was quite recognisable to hear and see. As I strained my ears through the background noise _—da dum, da dum, da dum—_ I heard I was right.

Caught in the distraction, it only gave me more reason to let my quill and parchment slip from my gauzed fingers and lean back, stretching my legs out in front of me, hot dew there too, encouraging me to undo a few buttons as the sun beat hard against my chest, head tipping back, light in my jaw, my throat, everything.

There was a scoff. My head shot back up.

“I thought you despised life.”

Riddle stood a few feet away, shuffling through letters I could only assume he was taking to the Owlery. I pulled my shirt over my chest.

My mistake was instant defence. “I do.”

He refused to look at me, like I was hard to look at. “You seem to bask in it.”

 _“Bask in it?”_ I scoffed. “You say that like you know my every thought.”

Neither of us spoke. I stared ahead into the distance, head pumping. He kept his head down.

“If I didn’t,” said Riddle, “You’d be dead.”

“Pity.” I gathered the half-finished page of notes before gathering my quill again. “How do you know I’m not lying, anyway? Anyone can pretend they want to die.”

“It doesn’t take a genius.”

My eyes flicked up at him. “Does it not?”

“No,” said Riddle, holding a hand out. “Pass me your notes.”

Which only made me feel more inclined to move them away. “Why?”

Which only made him feel more inclined to take Wren’s seat, swiftly snatching the notes from my grasp. I shot up to get them— _you dickhead_ —but Riddle just waved his hand about like he was teasing a cat with string.

_“Hand them over, Riddle—”_

“I’ll show you something first.” He said gravely. With reluctance, I moved back to my original stance in surrender.

Riddle ruffled the parchment, then stretched out the creases. “See this baseline?” As his digit lined the feet of my words, I noticed how they drooped off towards the end, whole paragraphs looking more like thick arches than straight lines.

With the same reluctance, I nodded.

“They say that denotes a sad state of mind. Here, you’ve applied a lot of pressure”—and I couldn’t argue with the dark blots and holes where my ink clotted—“which often represents self-destructive thoughts. You cross your t’s low, too, which usually suggests low self-esteem.”

I nodded, half-wounded, half-impressed. “But you didn’t know what my handwriting looked like in the forest.” But I had no other argument, so I pathetically presented him with my burnt palms as if I were four and I’d broken my favourite toy. “And, well, my handwriting’s bound to be shit right now.”

Riddle sighed. “I sat by you in Transfiguration last term. Your writing looks the same as it did then.”

I sighed back. “Well, looks like you’ve caught me,” I mock confessed, “because I’m going to die soon.”

He feigned concern. “You’re sick?”

I found it entertaining that he presumed it was a physical illness, something killing me from the inside, anywhere within that wasn’t my own head.

“In many ways, yes.” I told him. “But I’m going to kill myself if—”

“—if I don’t kill you first?”

“That’s what I’m saying.” I lay down again, so indifferent it sounded like a joke. “By graduation, I want to be dead.”

Riddle stifled a laugh. “You’re terrible at garnering pity.”

Heat boiled in my chest. “I wasn’t asking for it.”

“No,” Riddle spat, gesturing to my pages, “When asking doesn’t work, you show.”

I sat up, sharp. “Excuse me?”

He leaned in close, mouth scraping my ear, breath fashioning dew on my skin.

“You heard.”

He got up, but I stopped him.

“So is it a deal?”

I offered my hand.

“Absolutely not.”

My hand lingered in the air.

“A challenge, then.”

Riddle sighed.

“Fine,” He shook my hand, “A challenge.”


	4. sixteen days

I’d hoped my _see you never_ had begun the moment he left, tension in my shoulders dissolving as I dozed off into the warmth of midmorning. I’d prayed it started there, but I also prayed that the challenge surpassed a sick joke and he committed to it. There were two ends of the spectrum of what I wanted—homicide at one, suicide at the other—and he had to be at one end, I relied on that. Not that there was reliance on him alone—I could do it myself. It was just preferable I didn’t.

Then again, _see you never_ sounded crueler than it really was. It sounded abrupt. Harsh, cold, slapdash—but it was only half-monosyllabic bullshit, for _see you never_ just meant _see you when the absence of dialogue is inconvenient for us again._ Then, yet again, we part.

_See you never!_

The next time silence proved itself powerless was against a pure-blood elitist—and to my greatest surprise, it wasn’t Riddle himself.

Classes drew longer, but we’d only pray for them again when exams were slotted in their place. It was as if only half of the seventh-years truly cared for their N.E.W.T.s, the other half scrambling for their torn exam timetable three minutes after breakfast. I knew Riddle was part of one half, tending to the precious welfare of his reputation. I wavered between caring and not caring; corpses hardly needed qualifications.

Wren, however—she couldn’t have been more terrified. She had vomited countlessly, and only ate so her brain could work. She drank a lot, but little enough so she didn’t get distracted by a full bladder halfway through an exam.

And today, an exam had ended, and Wren left just as nauseous as she was when she entered. We’d left together so soon after that the hall was still dead, and that was when Avery chose to be the same stupid cunt he always was.

“I don’t know why you bother wondering if you’ll pass, Ivchenko,” He’d said at her side, “You’re bound to fail.”

My skin boiled and I nearly told her to ignore him but then he laughed and said: “Mudbloods always do.”

I couldn’t help myself.

_“Crucio!”_

And suddenly he was convulsing on the floor, and students were beginning to pool at the exit door so I had to stop no matter how fucking _badly_ I wanted him to suffer.

But it was too late and his friends had gathered and Merrythought had scurried over and I knew I’d fucked up so terribly that I may as well have died right there and then. Not that I wasn’t already trying.

“What’s going on?”

Gathering himself to his feet, Avery spluttered his words: “She used the Cr—”

“Knockback Jinx, Professor.”

My eyes shifted to the voice. When I met the face, it must’ve been a cruel—or kind?—dream.

“Ignore Avery, he’s easily startled.” And Riddle had the audacity to smile when he’d just witnessed torture like it was rain. Avery just stared at him, tremors still rolling through him.

He said nothing.

Merrythought slowly blinked at me. “Is this true, Valois?”

I blinked back. “Yes, Professor.”

And a detention was set in stone and everyone spilt out into the hallways again. I walked to the throb of my pulse, reminiscent of Lovegood, and Wren couldn’t keep her stare from me.

“Thank you, but you didn’t have to do that.”

“He wouldn’t stop else.”

“He wouldn’t stop anyway, Briar,” she said, “Hurting them just encourages them.” She then shook her head, as if thoughts were pounding against the walls of her skull. “Why did Riddle defend you, anyway? I didn’t think you even knew each other.”

“No,” I said quickly. “We don’t.”

 _“Eto fignya,”_ Wren muttered, as if I hadn’t gathered that meant ‘that’s bullshit’ over seven years of knowing her. “You’re lying to me.”

I looked away. “We’ve spoken three times.”

“That’s more than anyone else outside his circle.”

It was a fair argument.

We finally reached the hall, all of Riddle’s friends staring through me until he came to sit with them. My gaze strayed.

Childlike thrill started in her. “Are you getting with him?”

“Sixteen days before graduation?”

“Does that stop anyone?”

“I don’t see the point,” I said, resting my head in my hands. “I won’t even be here.”

Wren bit at the edge of a biscuit. “Your mum still wants to move back to France?”

She knew about it. Not a lot, but she knew, and yet the sudden flicker of half-glee in her eyes when there was talk of romance or graduation or travel still made me feel like shit to extinguish with _no, Wren, I mean I won’t be here on this planet._

So, France (my mother’s first summers belonged there, though she only remembered the tail end of her ninth). No, not France, unless France was code for six feet underground.

“I think so,” I said softly. “She misses it, I think.”

“Does that mean you were debating it, then?” Wren gulped down more water than she did food.

“Debating what?”

“Dating Riddle.”

“Definitely not.”

I could tell from that alone she wanted to say _you’re lying to me again_ , but she just continued to nibble on her biscuit and read over her Potions book until the bell rang for the next exam.

* * *

There was no point in wasting my day wallowing in the fact I’d have to spend hours on end doing some menial task, but it was better than having my wand smashed to splinters and being hurled into the corners of Azkaban. I should’ve thanked Riddle for it—before I winced at that thought, discarded it, thought it again, winced, discarded.

When I was given the foul task of cleaning every square inch of the awards until they sparkled in the trophy room—all without magic, which I did at home before my seventeenth anyway—it gave me the false security of order. If items were together, cleaned, dusted, new, then surely everything else was just the same. It was untrue, but sometimes lies were safer.

Despite this belief, I’d nearly dozed off on the face of three plaques already, and knocked over at least five trophies by laying against them and misjudging their weight. I half-slept for a few minutes, scrubbed a trophy spotless, then slept a bit heavier.

“It’s not that taxing, Valois.”

Face hot, I rose up, fringe still obscuring my vision. Though I was certain who it was, I couldn’t stop my automated response. “I’m sorry, sir—”

_“Sir?”_

“Piss off, Riddle,” I spat, rubbing my eyes. “You haven’t got the right to come here and mock me.”

“You think I chose to be here?” he scoffed. “I was told to keep an eye on you. Whoever was had business to tend to.” He stared at the mound of trophies that had been knocked over. “And they were doing a fucking terrible job.”

When I yawned into the reflection of the gold shield I’d slept on, it was only then I wish I’d vomited on it, crushed it, burnt it.

“ _You_ got this award?” I laughed quite violently at him. “What for?”

Riddle just stared. “Read it, it may tell you.”

I wanted to batter him to death with his own trophy. “No chance did you get it for _services to the school_.” I nearly refused to polish it. “What do you ever do? Look pretty?” Regret charged me the second the last question left my mouth. “I didn’t know murder was a helpful _service_ , but if everybody thought Myrtle and Melanie were so annoying, I suppose it was.”

And suddenly his face was close again and my thighs knotted together, arms folded over my chest. I didn’t know how much provoking it would take to have myself dead by the end of the detention, but this clearly wasn’t enough.

“I saved you from expulsion earlier,” he spat. “You could at least thank me.”

“Thank you,” I said with no gratitude. “I just don’t understand why you did it.”

Riddle lowered his voice, consonants flicking. “Say you go to Azkaban, Valois. You’ll want to die just as badly as you do now, and if you die there—”

“—it would just be the same as letting a happy Mudblood go free?” His silence was confirmation. “Wow, you’re sick. Sicker than me, and that’s truly a feat.”

“You used the Cruciatus curse on my friend.”

“You killed two people and got an award for it.”

His eyes read _touché_ but instead he said: “I suppose that makes us as bad as each other.”

“Killing is far worse.”

“Not to you.”

And my silence was unspoken agreement, my own quiet _touché_. I continued to scrub vigorously at his name until the gold shone, then swapping it for another trophy.

“Just because I want it doesn’t make it right, Tom.”

_Tom._

His eyes narrowed. “Why do you want it, anyway, Briar?”

It drew from his tongue like a string of honey, provocative in both senses of the word. I tried to look at him, failing to do so without faltering.

“Do I have to give reason?” I asked. “Do people always give reasons why they want to live?”

“Yes,” said Riddle, “‘Don’t kill me, I have a wife’, ‘Don’t kill me, I have kids’, ‘Don’t kill me, please, I’m only twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t kill me.’”

Finally, I looked. “And you never listen, do you?”

Twisted rapture crossed him. “No,” he said and the air grew cold, “So what’s your reasoning?”

I shifted in my seat. Crossed my left leg over my right, my right over my left. I unfolded my arms and squeezed my hands together, cloth strewn across the table. I’d never been this blunt about it, not even to Wren, who I practically watched break when I told her. Hope lay with the fact that Riddle—or Tom—would take it in as fact, not pity.

“My father left before I was born,” I said slowly. “I tell everyone he’s dead. They don’t make the ‘no wonder he left you’ joke when I say that.” He stayed silent, waiting for me to continue. “My mother—she’s called Rose, which makes our names sound stupid together—erm, she’s really kind, but she’s sick too. I mean, she’s sad, _really_ sad—she’s been like it my whole life. She floats around our house like a ghost, not really knowing what to do with herself. The rest of our family is in France, and they don’t really like her because she left, so I only have her.”

Tom swallowed. “I’m s—”

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry, killers never feel sorry,” I said. “Just—tell me about your family instead.”

He laughed. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Everyone has something.”

“I’m an orphan, Briar. Everyone I know is dead.” Those words left him like daggers across ice.

I swallowed hard. “I guess I can’t say ‘I’m sorry’ to you, either?”

“I wouldn’t waste my breath on it.” Using magic to ridicule me, he made the fallen trophies stand tall. “But I’m not the one who wants to die.”

“Is loneliness a weak explanation to you?”

“That’s not all though, is it?”

“I don’t need to tell you more.” I could’ve laughed and cried simultaneously. “I wake up and wish I was asleep—eternally. That’s it. I don’t want to be here.”

“How ironic,” Tom said softly, derisively, his eyes still on me. “Both Briar and Rose want to sleep forever.”

The fact that he was right dazed me into silence. It wasn’t an agonising silence like I’d expected, but rather the kind that hung around quiet cottages, mildly interrupted by the wheeze of a kettle and the slow flick of a frail book page. It had the quality of being sliced through every now and then without even a tinge of embarrassment, and we sat like that for a while, hours maybe.

“It’s midnight.” He eventually said, a final incision. “You can go. I’ll tell Merrythought you did the detention.”

I eventually scrambled to my feet, body numb from sitting in the same position for so long. My hands curled around the door handle, words tight in my throat— _thanks, Tom_ —and I knew it was an instant regret as I heard half of a smug _you’re welcome_ in the slam of the door.


End file.
